So you mean we can't say something like, "Man this is taking a long time"? I mean I'm not saying that because I think it's going pretty fast, but I'm wondering if you mean something like that or just asking something like "When do you think the next level will start" or "when do you think the base will be completed."

It's fine to discuss timetables for various aspects of the project. But I will no longer tolerate people coming to this thread specifically to complain about the pace of construction. Clearly, it's a topic that has been beaten senseless and only serves to annoy many of those who regularly post here. And I don't blame them.

It took me a long time, but I found the map that shows the subgrade retail area's:
It seems that most of the subgrade retail is located along the 9A underpass and the transit hub.

Now we are talking.
Thanks for the plan.

__________________RIP QuantumX & Desertpunk

"Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.” Thomas Jefferson
"We Shall Never Surrender." Winston Churchill
“Not all those who wander are lost.” J.R.R. Tolkien
"Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious." Oscar Wilde
"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." Benjamin Franklin

btw, i'm just wondering.... how does the ramp come out? cause soon it'll have to. Do they just take it all off and then hoist stuff up and out of there?

According to WTCRising.com on the construction progress page, the ramp is scheduled to be demolished in April 2008 to allow for the north memorial's steel structure to be built/completed. After that it'll be the same as FT now where everything has to be lifted by crane.

An expanded search for human remains begun last year at ground zero is largely completed, according to a memorandum sent to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg on Tuesday and ushering in a new phase of operations.

Deputy Mayor Edward Skyler, who is overseeing the search, said in the memo that the medical examiner’s office had completed examining debris from most of the areas officials identified in October 2006 after the discovery of 201 bones and bone fragments in an abandoned Consolidated Edison manhole on the west edge of the World Trade Center site.

The search has thus far recovered 1,772 possible human remains from 15,000 cubic yards of debris at a cost of $38 million, according to the memo. Officials have completed operations at 140 Liberty Street, where St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church once stood, and along the haul road between Vesey and Cedar Streets.

The searches are largely finished on Cedar Street from Washington to West Street and in an area in front of the World Financial Center bounded by Vesey, Albany and West Streets.

Several other areas — including Fiterman Hall, the ground beneath the Deutsche Bank building, and underground structures west of Broadway between Barclay and Albany Streets — remain to be searched, Mr. Skyler wrote, but are not yet accessible.

As demolition and construction moves forward, Mr. Skyler wrote, officials plan to continue examining debris from new locations, but that will be handled by a mobile unit rather than at the medical examiner’s recovery lab at 11 Water Street in Brooklyn.

“The conversion of 11 Water Street to a mobile platform acknowledges the sad reality that the search for remains will go on as long as there is excavation activity in and around the W.T.C. site,” he wrote. “With the considerable expertise of its top scientific and operations staff, the city is well prepared to continue this search, wherever it leads.”

The developments are unlikely to mollify many of the victims’ families, who are waiting for the remains of their loved ones and have criticized the way the search has been handled from the start.

“The whole process of the search and reclamation of human remains was mishandled from 9/12 on,” said Sally Regenhard, who has not recovered the remains of her son Christian, a probationary firefighter who died in the terror attack. Saying that the city had signed off on the area being free of remains long before more remains were discovered, she added, “It’s wrong, and you just can’t manipulate and dance around something that has been wrong from the beginning.”

__________________
I respected your views, so I expect you do to the same.

In less than three weeks, the rest of this project starts up and we start the climb to the peak of construction. The WTC alone will be the same as building four Empire State Buildings at once. This project is a centerpiece of humanity and just one of the diamonds on the crown of the city.

Just Lower Manhattan’s skyline alone is as good as any other. Aside from the Freedom Tower and rest of the WTC, three other supertall skyscrapers and two shorter ones, you have the new transit center, Fulton Street hub, and all of the at grade and below grade connections between all of the buildings of the WTC and WFC, with a lot of retail areas too. The entire area is getting utility and street upgrades and the South Ferry Terminal and its subway extension will be completed in 2009. West Street is being transformed and the WFC will be getting that cool floating ferry terminal.

New parks and waterfronts will open all over downtown. There’s over $22 billion dollars work of construction going on just at and around the area around the WTC site; the city and people involved are really investing a lot into every aspect of the area. In terms of the bigger towers, you have the GS HQ Tower, the same height as 7WTC, right next to the Freedom Tower and WFC, 99 Church Street – an amazing 70-story condo and hotel tower being built by Silverstein Properties, 123 Washington Street – a new hotel skyscraper right nest to WTC Tower 5, 50 West Street, a residential skyscraper with over 60 floors going up close to 123 Washington, 80 South Street – a possible supertall condo tower and one of the tallest, the 65-floor West Street Residential Tower, the Intercontinental Hotel with 55 floors, the Sheraton Downtown and Gold Street Hotel towers, the Diamond Exchange Tower, 161 Maiden Lane by the water, 8 Spruce Street – a 75-story tower likely over 900 feet tall, 56 Leonard Street, a 800-foot-tall tower, and many other buildings over 500 feet tall. There is too much to mention and most of its catalyst was the WTC. All of this is just in lower Manhattan. Midtown Manhattan literally has three times the amount of stuff going on. But it's clear that what everyone has their eyes on right now is the WTC. No one will be let down because the new year starts the climb to the apex of construction. The Freedom Tower groundbreakings and first erection of steel may have been for show, but in a few months, there will be too much construction for one person to grasp. That's why the LMCCC had to be formed.

The WTC alone will be the same as building four Empire State Buildings at once.

Where do you come up with the fact that the WTC alone (I'm assuming you mean WTC-1) will be the same is building for Empire State Building's? Yes, it's a little taller but since the facing on the EBS is all solid stone I'm sure the weight is more than WTC-1. Also a much smaller portion of the ESB is unoccupied space and thus relatively unfinished. What fact are you referring to saying that WTC is four times the EBS?

Where do you come up with the fact that the WTC alone (I'm assuming you mean WTC-1) will be the same is building for Empire State Building's? Yes, it's a little taller but since the facing on the EBS is all solid stone I'm sure the weight is more than WTC-1. Also a much smaller portion of the ESB is unoccupied space and thus relatively unfinished. What fact are you referring to saying that WTC is four times the EBS?

He's including all the towers of the WTC when he said that.

__________________
Your views are your own, and are respected by no one but yourself.

Where do you come up with the fact that the WTC alone (I'm assuming you mean WTC-1) will be the same is building for Empire State Building's? Yes, it's a little taller but since the facing on the EBS is all solid stone I'm sure the weight is more than WTC-1. Also a much smaller portion of the ESB is unoccupied space and thus relatively unfinished. What fact are you referring to saying that WTC is four times the EBS?

The ESB is not made of solid stone. It's made of a steel frame with stone and aluminum cladding. This way the ESB is a relative light structure. The Freedom Tower will be made from a steel frame covered with concrete and a concrete core. This is the strongest combination possible and it's also capable to withstand huge fires. However it's weights quite a lot because of the concrete. So I don't think the ESB will weight more than the FT.